Concert Program III

TRANSPORTED: Sonic Journeys

Music, the most abstract of art forms, perhaps most intensely captures the imagination. “Transported” explores music’s ability to enrapture listeners through vivid depictions of places near and far. Samuel Barber’s classic Dover Beach sets poet Matthew Arnold’s picturesque paean to the English shore. Chen Yi’s Romance of Hsiao and Ch’in takes listeners farther afield, magically conjuring traditional Chinese folk music using Western instruments. Debussy’s Images and Albéniz’s Iberia Suite both capture the spirit of the Iberian Peninsula, just as Sibelius’s Voces Intimae evokes the mystery of the composer’s native Finland. The program culminates in Gustav Mahler’s enchanting setting of a child’s vision of heaven.

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Program
Samuel BARBER (1910–1981): Dover Beach (1931)
CHEN Yi (b. 1953): Romance of Hsiao and Ch’in (1998)
Jean SIBELIUS (1865–1957): String Quartet in d minor, op. 56, Voces Intimae (1909)
Isaac ALBÉNIZ (1860–1909): Evocación from Iberia Suite, B. 47, Book 1 (1905–1909)
Enrique GRANADOS (1867–1916): Los requiebros from Goyescas: Los majos enamorados, Book 1 (1909–1911)
Claude DEBUSSY (1862–1918): Selections from Images (1905–1908)
Gustav MAHLER (1860–1911): Das himmlische Leben from Symphony no. 4 (1899–1900)

Artists
Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano
Kelly Markgraf, baritone
Carol Wincenc, flute and piccolo
James Austin Smith, oboe
Jose Franch-Ballester, clarinet
Jeffrey Kahane, Wu Han, pianos
Hyeyeon Park, harmonium
Jorja Fleezanis, violin
Scott Pingel, bass
Florian Conzetti, Christopher Froh, percussion
Escher String Quartet
  Adam Barnett-Hart, Wu Jie, violins
  Pierre Lapointe, viola
  Dane Johansen, cello

Friday, July 27

8:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Tickets: $65/$55 adult; $30/$20 student
Buy Now»

Prelude Performance*
6:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Free Admission

* Prelude Performances feature young artists from the Chamber Music Institute. Admission is free. Learn more.»

Image: James Valentine (1815–1880). Paddington Station, London, ca. 1880. Photograph. Adoc-photos/Art Resource, NY